Modern History Sourcebook:
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865):
Special Session Message, July 4, 1861

Lincoln had to get special Congressional permission to pay for the war against the
Confederacy. He called Congress into special session on July 4, 1861, and here explains
his actions at the outbreak of the war. He goes on to expound on the purpose of the
conflict in defense of the Union and its ideal of equal opportunity.

It might seem at first thought to be of little difference whether the present
movement at the South be called "secession" or "rebellion." The
movers, however, well understand the difference. At the beginning they knew they could
never raise their treason to any respectable magnitude by any name which implies violation of law. They knew their people possessed as much of moral sense, as much of devotion
to law and order, and as much pride in and reverence for the history and Government of
their common country as any other civilized and patriotic people. They knew they could
make no advancement directly in the teeth of these strong and noble sentiments.
Accordingly, they commenced by an insidious debauching of the public mind. They invented
an ingenious sophism, which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps through
all the incidents to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is that any
State of the Union may consistently with the National Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the Union without the consent of the Union or of
any other State. The little disguise that the supposed right is to be exercised only for
just cause, themselves to be the sole judge of its justice, is too thin to merit any
notice.

With rebellion thus sugar coated they have been drugging the public mind of their
section for more than thirty years, and until at length they have brought many good men to
a willingness to take up arms against the Government the day after some assemblage of men
have enacted the farcical pretense of taking their State out of the Union who could have
been brought to no such thing the day before.

This sophism derives much, perhaps the whole, of its currency from the assumption that
there is some omnipotent and sacred supremacy pertaining to a State-to each State of our
Federal Union. Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in
the Union by the Constitution, no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union.
The original ones passed into the Union even before they cast off their British colonial
dependence, and the new ones each came into the Union directly from a condition of
dependence, excepting Texas; and even Texas, in its temporary independence, was never
designated a State. The new ones only took the designation of States on coming into the
Union, while that name was first adopted for the old ones in and by the Declaration of
Independence. Therein the "United Colonies" were declared to be "free and
independent States"; but even then the object plainly was not to declare their
independence of one another or of the Union, but directly the contrary, as their mutual
pledge and their mutual action before, at the time, and afterwards abundantly show. The
express plighting of faith by each and all of the original thirteen in the Articles of
Confederation, two years later, that the Union shall be perpetual is most conclusive.
Having never been States, either in substance or in name, outside of the Union, whence
this magical omnipotence of "State rights," asserting a claim of power to
lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the "sovereignty" of the
States, but the word even is not in the National Constitution, nor, as is believed, in any
of the State constitutions. What is a "sovereignty" in the political sense of
the term? Would it be far wrong to define it "a political community without a
political superior"? Tested by this, no one of our States, except Texas, ever was a
sovereignty; and even Texas gave up the character on coming into the Union, by which act
she acknowledged the Constitution of the United States and the laws and treaties of the
United States made in pursuance of the Constitution to be for her the supreme law of the
land. The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If
they break from us, they can only do so against law and by revolution. The Union, and not
themselves separately, procured their independence and their liberty. By conquest or
purchase the Union gave each of them whatever of independence and liberty it has. The
Union is older than any of the States, and, in fact, it created them as States. Originally
some dependent colonies made the Union, and in turn the Union threw off their old
dependence for them and made them States, such as they are. Not one of them ever had a
State constitution independent of the Union. Of course it is not forgotten that all the
new States framed their constitutions before they entered the Union, nevertheless
dependent upon and preparatory to coming into the Union.

***

This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for
maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to
elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the
paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in
the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is
the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend.

I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate this. It is
worthy of note that while in this the Government's hour of trial large numbers of those in
the Army and Navy who have been favored with the offices have resigned and proved false to
the hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier or common sailor is known to have
deserted his flag.

Great honor is due to those officers who remained true despite the example of their
treacherous associates; but the greatest honor and most important fact of all is the
unanimous firmness of the common soldiers and common sailors. To the last man, so far as
known, they have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose commands but
an hour before they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic instinct of plain
people. They understand without an argument that the destroying the Government which was
made by Washington means no good to them.

Our popular Government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people
have already settled-the successful establishing and the successful administering of it.
One still remains-its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to
overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly
carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and
peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally
decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful
appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson
of peace, teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it
by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.

Lest there be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what is to be the course
of the Government toward the Southern States after the rebellion shall have been
suppressed, the Executive deems it proper to say it will be his purpose then, as ever, to
be guided by the Constitution and the laws, and that he probably will have no different
understanding of the powers and duties of the Federal Government relatively to the rights
of the States and the people under the Constitution than that expressed in the inaugural
address.

He desires to preserve the Government, that it may be administered for all as it was
administered by the men who made it. Loyal citizens everywhere have the right to claim
this of their government, and the government has no right to withhold or neglect it. It is
not perceived that in giving it there is any coercion, any conquest, or any subjugation in
any just sense of those terms.

The Constitution provides, and all the States have accepted the provision, that
"the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of
government." But if a State may lawfully go out of the Union, having done so it may
also discard the republican form of government; so that to prevent its going out is an
indispensable means to the end of maintaining the guaranty mentioned; and
when an end is lawful and obligatory the indispensable means to it are also lawful and
obligatory.

It was with the deepest regret that the Executive found the duty of employing the war
power in defense of the Government forced upon him. He could but perform this duty or
surrender the existence of the Government. No compromise by public servants could in this
case be a cure; not that compromises are not often proper, but that no popular government
can long survive a marked precedent that those who carry an election can only save the
government from immediate destruction by giving up the main point upon which the people
gave the election. The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their
own deliberate decisions.

As a private citizen the Executive could not have consented that these institutions
shall perish; much less could he in betrayal of so vast and so sacred a trust as these
free people had confided to him. He felt that he had no moral right to shrink, nor even to
count the chances of his own life, in what might follow. In full view of his great
responsibility he has so far done what he has deemed his duty. You will now, according to
your own judgment, perform yours. He sincerely hopes that your views and your action may
so accord with his as to assure all faithful citizens who have been disturbed in their
rights of a certain and speedy restoration to them under the Constitution and the laws.

And having thus chosen our course, without guile and with pure purpose, let us renew
our trust in God and go forward without fear and with manly hearts.

Source:

Abraham Lincoln, "Special Session Message, July 4, 1861," in A Compilation
of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. 7, ed. James D. Richardson (New
York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), pp. 3227-29, 3231-32.

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